-The ACA was originally a Republican plan (RomneyCare in Massachusetts, NixonCare, Heritage coining the individual mandate in response to Clinton's Employer mandate, etc)
-Obama wanted to cut the Corporate tax rate to 28%
-Obama's time as president was when part of the Bush Tax Cuts were made permanent
-Obama partially funded the ACA via cuts to Medicare spending (meanwhile, Romney was campaigning on undoing that - in fact that was the only complaint he actually made about the ACA)
-Obama despite being broadly pro-immigration still deported more folks than several prior presidents combined
-Obama was willing to cooperate with the GOP on a grand bargain for dealing with long-term entitlements issues (c
-Obama kept Republican Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense
-Obama had Centrist Democrat David Boren and Chuck Hagel as top intelligence advisers
-Obama was reasonably supportive of fracking (with environmental caveats)
-Obama supported cap and trade (which was an early 90s republican idea to deal with Sulfur Dioxide) over more heavy handed regulatory policies
And on trade, Obama got more Republican support than Democratic support.
It's actually kind of funny. Trump in many ways is closer to the caricature conservatives had of Obama than Obama was/is.
Yeah, Rush popped up then. Might just be the old correlation/causation chestnut, might be something to it.
The POD may be late, but the circumstances of blanket obstructionism are so specific you can’t tell me they’re a universal truth. What if different meetings are held? What if the dialogue in the room is more like the 2012 GOP after-action report? What if it takes them longer to come around to blanket obstruction? Or what if the fever breaks early? There are questions applicable to the time period.
Try reconcile Jackson's post with your response to me. It doesnt. Add in McConnell's line in early 2009 that his number 1 agenda was to make Obama a 1 term President. I really dont know how you change this without changing the underlying attitudes held by both congressional R's and their voter base.